Chinese Progressive Association Celebrates International Women’s Day with Three Generations of Women Leaders

About 30 community members from the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) were honored on Saturday in San Francisco’s Chinatown in celebration of International Women’s Day. CPA celebrated the courage and role model of three generations of women leaders – women who organized CPA’s womens’ group back in the 1980s, now grandmothers and greatgrandmothers; women who are standing up against wage theft, organizing for worker rights, and supporting SRO families for fair housing conditions; and young women who are organizing their peers in high school around healthcare and educational justice.

Attendees enjoyed locally prepared dim sum and hot tea and discussed gender equity in their communities. Some asserted that it’s still a big problem, such as some parents’ preference for boys over girls, while others, such as youth member Stephanie Chan, felt that her family has more gender equality in comparison to other households and generations since her parents has equal division of labor through cooking, shopping for groceries, and running errands.

During the event, committee members also shared stories of working with CPA to combat social injustice issues in the San Francisco community. Ah Shuang, a current worker leader in the Tenant Workers Center committee shared her CPA story about helping eight immigrant restaurant workers win a settlement of a wage theft case in San Francisco. “It was exciting because we all started as volunteers and fought so hard for them, and to finally win the case was amazing,” reminisced Shuang.

Globally, women do about 66% of the world’s work in return for less than 5% of its income but own less than 1% of the world’s property. (Source :World Development Indicators, 1997, Womankind Worldwide). Ka Yan Cheung, an organizer at CPA, concluded the celebration by stressing that women are still struggling both in and out of the workforce. “In our community, we see women workers getting stuck in the lowest paying positions doing the dirtiest work. Ending gender oppression needs to go hand in hand with ending economic inequity.”

Chinese Progressive Association is a non-profit grassroots organization that strives to educate and empower low income and working class immigrants in the Chinese community in San Francisco to demand better living and working conditions and social justice. For more information about CPA or to get involved, visit www.cpasf.org.